Time is NOT on my Side

Howdy folks! I don't have a clue where this month is going, but it's going fast! A lot has happened in the past couple of days in my time spent in schools, good and well not so good. These are my stories.

This week, my co-op teacher gave me an entire afternoon to teach on my own.  Two English lessons for grade 9 students. I had the opportunity to teach whatever I wanted, however I wanted. The only stipulation is that my topic was already defined for me... grammar. Specifically when and how to properly punctuate titles using "quotation marks" or underling (or italicizing).

Good grief! Grammar, as it turns out is a tough lesson to make engaging and fun. Apparently no one likes teaching it. I remained undaunted and did my best to come up with a lesson that would inspire students to underline titles to their hearts content for years and decades to come. 

What I came up with was an introduction and rundown of the rules associated with punctuating titles followed by an activity that had students break up into a battle of the sexes: boys vs. girls.  Next they would elect one member each to come to the front of the classroom and buzz in to correctly answer which of the two previously prepared sentences were correctly punctuated. They all seemed to enjoy the activity. I had some prizes for the winners of each round. I felt like I was pulling out all the stops to help these students develop a love for grammar.

After the game was complete, I looked up at the clock and to my dismay, the entire activity had taken only 25 minutes!! If that. Luckily, I had also prepared a worksheet for the students to fine-tune their skills. Some students completed it in less than 15 minutes while others struggled and others goofed off entirely.  By the last 10 minutes, the classroom was pretty disorganized, entirely because I didn't have quite enough for them to do. What had started out so promising, had ended less than ideally. 

The nice thing about having the entire afternoon to complete this lesson was that I had a second chance during the next period to perfect it.  This one went even better, I took more time with the activity that I had prepared instead of rushing through it.  As well, once the students had completed the worksheet I made up another competition that had them provide their answers in front of the class against a fellow student.  When all was said and done, the entire lesson took us almost all the way to the bell.  Just a few minutes to spare. I was more satisfied with this.

I learned a lot about time management this week. It is true about what we learned in class. If the students are not engaged and are not paying attention, it is probably because the class lesson was not well planned out enough to get them engaged. That was exactly what happened to me this week.  As painful as it was for those few minutes to see my class fall apart, I'm glad it happened because I learned so much.

Collaborative Lessons

This week, one of the teachers I work with gave me and a fellow classmate a big vote of confidence when we were allowed an entire hour on Wednesday to co-teach a lesson.  The lesson was in Native Studies 30 and we were given very little guidance on how to teach the lesson.  The freedom to do whatever we wanted was both exciting and daunting. 

We decided that we would do our lesson on the various levels of government that exist and allude back to self-government for First Nations people as well as the existing governing structures that exist in the Aboriginal population.  In order to formulate our lesson we met up at Tim's and spent a few hours relearning/perfecting our own knowledge on levels of government so we did not get up in front of the class the following day and be unable to answer any questions. We ended up formulating a Prezi, and outlined all the notes that the students were to take on that program.  Me prerogative is that students have to take notes in class, Prezi makes taking them about as much fun as is ever going to be possible!!

Our lesson was not entirely notes based however, both my partner and I fed off each other and shared personal accounts and experiences related to the levels of government that exist in Canada.  I feel that by sharing personal stories, the information to be studied is more easily put into perspective for the students and they can better understand how what they are learning can be applied to their own lives.  At the end of our lesson we opened up some discussion questions to the class and quizzed them a bit on their knowledge of the government, especially pertaining to the most recent civic election. The activity proved to be pretty engaging for some, not so much for others. All-in-all it was an OK first lesson. Could have been better, but could have definitely been worse. As well, having the opportunity to co-teach with a fellow student teacher helped put both of us at ease in front of the classroom.